English

Condensation of the digraph associated with a reciprocal matrix and a vector

Combinatorics 2026-07-11 v1

Abstract

Reciprocal matrices are a fundamental tool in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), where priority vectors are typically derived from pairwise comparisons. The efficiency of a positive vector, in the sense of Pareto optimality, can be characterized through the strong connectivity of a directed graph GA,wG_{A,w} associated with a reciprocal matrix AA and a vector ww. In this paper, we investigate the structure of the condensation digraph of GA,wG_{A,w} in the case where ww is inefficient, with particular emphasis on the Perron vector. We provide a characterization of this structure and derive several constructive results. In particular, we show how efficiency can be achieved by modifying a single pair of reciprocal entries, and we construct an augmented reciprocal matrix whose efficient vector extends ww. Finally, we propose a procedure to transform ww into an efficient vector for AA.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.10279,
  title  = {Condensation of the digraph associated with a reciprocal matrix and a vector},
  author = {Rosário Fernandes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.10279},
  year   = {2026}
}